Also by the Author

Friday, May 5. 2017

Pillsy has introduced a medication adherence solution that uses a "smart pill bottle" to ensure that the patient takes their medicine as directed. The bottle senses when it is opened and closed, and communicates via Bluetooth with a mobile app running on an Android or iOS device. The system reminds the patient when they forget to take a dose, warns them when they try to take a double dose, and permits sharing the information with family or friends.

Pillsy addresses a serious problem. Many patients (particularly the elderly) fail to take medications as directed. Reportedly, 125,000 people die each year because they did not take their medications as prescribed.

However, there is no perfect solution to this problem. Pillsy can detect when the pill bottle is opened and closed, but it can't ensure that the patient ingested the medication. (An elderly patient might open a bottle, get distracted, and forget whether they took the pill.) Plus, many patients take multiple prescriptions, so they need to work with multiple bottles -- Pillsy does not sell a smart weekly or monthly pill keeper.

Pillsy will probably work well for some patients, but not for others. Younger patients may just need a daily reminder. Older patients with short-term memory problems may need to be prompted to perform each step: Get the container, open it, take out today's dose, swallow the pill(s), confirm the dose was taken, and close the container.

There are dozens of pill reminder apps on the market. According to Mobile Health News, Pillsy's competitors include Medisafe, AdhereTech, PillDrill, AiCure, and Catalia Health.

Medisafe is an Israeli company that has developed an adherence platform consisting of a wireless pill bottle, smartphone app, and cloud-based infrastructure. The firm claims to have 3.5 million patients and caregivers on its platform. Medisafe recently raised $14.5 million in series B funding.

AdhereTech is another company using wireless smart pill bottles. The bottle can light up and/or generate an automated phone call as reminder. The battery can run for over six months before it needs to be recharged.

PillDrill offers a smart pill organizer that reminds the patient to take their meds, records that a dose has been taken, and enables the patient to indicate how they are feeling -- all by scanning the pill containers and a Mood Cube using the PillDrill hub. The hub sells for $199. The pill keeper contains removable pods for two or four weeks' worth of meds. The hub communicates with family members via Wi-Fi. The patient does not need to have a smartphone, but Android and iOS apps are available. The firm also offers scannable tags that can be used with original pill bottles.

AiCure has developed an artificial intelligence platform that visually confirms medication ingestion using a smartphone. The firm touts its solution as helping to reduce clinical trial failures (AiCure says 30% of clinical trials fail).

Catalia Health sells the Mabu personal healthcare companion. The unit features a touchscreen, accepts voice input, asks the patient how they feel, and can send reminders to their phone for when they are away from home.

Tuesday, May 2. 2017

I’ve carried an Omron HJ-720IT pedometer around with me every day for several years. It’s a nice little activity monitor. It counts ordinary and aerobic steps, and calculates distance, calories used, and fat burned.

The pedometer’s battery needs to be replaced every several months. If I don’t have a spare coin cell battery on hand, it may be a day or two before I get around to buying another two-pack. There have been occasional short gaps in my activity monitoring.

The last time my pedometer’s battery died I decided to try the Samsung Health smartphone app. A smartphone contains -- among other things -- motion sensors and a GPS receiver. A smartphone can monitor physical activity and much more.

The smartphone and standalone pedometer each has its pros and cons. The advantage of the pedometer is that I can slip it into a pocket and carry it with me all day. It’s smaller and lighter than a smartphone. However, it’s battery needs to be replaced from time-to-time, and I have to connect it to a PC to upload and archive the data. (The HJ-720IT has a USB port, but does not support Bluetooth.)

Screenshot from Samsung Health running on a Galaxy S7

The advantage of the smartphone is that it can handle many other health and wellness tasks such as measuring heart rate and blood oxygen, and it runs the apps that collect, present, and analyze the data. The only real disadvantage is that I don’t carry it with me at all times when I’m indoors.

The two devices operate differently and I suspect one is somewhat more accurate. With the pedometer, you are instructed to measure and enter your stride length and your weight. With the smartphone app, you enter your height and weight, but there is no need to enter your stride, because the phone can measure how far you’ve traveled directly. The app can also distinguish between walking and running.

In fact, Samsung Health is really a fitness and wellness ecosystem. The Samsung Health website lists more than 125 partner companies. No doubt, you can import data from other devices such as Bluetooth-equipped blood pressure monitors. You can also manually record food and water intake, other activities (such as archery!), and sleep time.

A smartphone can’t perform all fitness and wellness tasks by itself, but it can work with other devices, and it can collect and analyze the data and present it in a useful form. Samsung even offers a telemedicine service -- you can consult with a doctor online without an appointment and for a modest fee.

I don’t think smartphones will eliminate other wearables and personal health devices. However, they will replace if not eliminate desktop fitness and wellness apps. Smartphones and smartphone apps are more capable and more personal. Their overall functionality is enhanced by specialized external devices. You might let your smartphone double as a pedometer, but you still need a waterproof, Bluetooth-enabled bracelet if you want to track your swimming activity.

Sunday, December 20. 2015

Healthcare solutions built around smartphones, cloud computing, and big data have the potential to cut through bureaucracy and put power back in the hands of consumers and their doctors.

I recently caught a glimpse of the future of healthcare at an open house at CIC in St. Louis. CIC provides office space, lab facilities and other resources tailored for startups. The 20 participants included three types of businesses: companies developing tools to help healthcare providers diagnose and treat illnesses, companies developing products to help healthcare providers interact more efficiently and effectively with patients, and companies developing healthcare products for consumers.

Several of the startups are leveraging smartphones, cloud computing and big data to create innovative and potentially disruptive solutions. Today’s healthcare consumers often feel overwhelmed when dealing with big insurance companies, large hospitals and mammoth government agencies. Fortunately, smart phones and Internet access have the potential to empower consumers by making healthcare more direct, personal, and timely.

Sparo Labs’ Wing
One intriguing startup is Sparo Labs. The company has developed Wing to help asthma patients manage their condition. Asthma is a chronic lung condition in which the airways become inflamed causing wheezing, coughing, and shortness of breath. Asthma is a serious and incurable disease that affects approximately 25 million Americans.

Wing enables patients to monitor their asthma daily to better understand and control it. Normally, asthma patients’ lung performance is only assessed during doctor visits (typically months apart) or when they show up at the emergency room. Wing uses the smartphone’s microphone, a hardware add-on and an app to measure FEV1 (how much air the user can exhale in one second) and peak flow (how fast the user exhales). This information can be used to detect and stop asthma attacks before they cause symptoms, to determine how well medications are working and to identify things in the environment that trigger attacks. For example, using the phone’s locating technology, lung performance can be linked to factors including temperature, humidity and pollen count.

By giving patients a tool that they can carry with them, and by linking the app to servers in the cloud, it will become increasingly possible to treat asthma proactively rather than reactively. The app enables patients to track and visualize their lung performance. The more it is used, the more it learns about the individual user’s asthma. A simple “stoplight” signals green, yellow or red to ensure the patient understands their current status. All in all, Wing could lead to a better understanding of what triggers attacks, which therapies are effective at stopping attacks, and how to manage asthma.

Sparo has received $1.25 million in seed funding. However, the firm will need to obtain FDA approval before it can make Wing available for purchase by consumers. Sparo believes that Wing will also prove useful for patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cystic fibrosis and pulmonary fibrosis, as well as athletes, singers and musicians who play wind instruments.

Ultradia’s Chrona
Another interesting company, Ultradia, has developed a product that transforms an ordinary pillow into a “smart pillow.” The device, Chrona, slips between the pillow and pillow cover with a foam insert and enhances the quality of sleep by emitting different sounds at specific times during the sleep cycle. Chrona also features a haptic alarm that gently vibrates to wake the user without disturbing their partner.

While the precise physiological function of sleep is still studied and debated, it’s clear that the quantity and quality of sleep affects a person’s health and sense of well-being. Sleep disorders can lead to high blood pressure, depression, and other problems. Ultradia points to research that shows acoustic stimulation can be used to enhance certain features of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM). Specifically, low frequency sounds have been found to boost deep sleep, while higher frequency sounds help prepare the user to wake up by promoting light sleep.

The Chrona device connects wirelessly to a smartphone via Bluetooth low energy. The smartphone can be used to check sleep score, change sleep optimization settings and set the haptic alarm. The Chrona device’s built-in accelerometer is used to quantify movement while sleeping. The Chrona app communicates with Ultradia’s cloud-based servers and, in theory, could be used to conduct long-term sleep studies involving large numbers of people. The Chrona unit is powered by a lithium-ion battery that must be recharged about once per week.

Data Dog Health’s Mindset
The third startup using smartphones, the cloud and big data is Data Dog Health. The company’s first app, Mindset, is described as a “toolkit for mental performance.” Mindset monitors stress throughout the day and automatically provides behavioral intervention when needed. Data Dog Health believes that managing stress is essential to helping users maximize performance at work, at play and at home. This can be accomplished by learning to turn distress (bad stress) into eustress (good stress such as experienced while exercising). Bad stress can cause problems including headaches, sleeplessness and irritability. Chronic bad stress is associated with greater susceptibility to viral infections.

Mindset collects data such as heart rate (from an optional wearable heart rate monitor), location (from GPS or another locating technology), motion (using the smartphone’s accelerometer) and time. An algorithm learns to detect when the user is exercising, resting, meditating or stressed out. When the app detects that the user may be stressed, it informs the user and suggest remedies such as relaxation. When the user feels stress coming on, he or she can open the app’s cognitive behavioral therapy tool. Like other smartphone-based health apps, data can brought back to the cloud for aggregation, analysis and visualization.

Big data is a big deal
There are three exciting things about the new breed of smartphone-based health aids. First, they enable consumers to detect health problems in their earliest stages, giving them a chance to take corrective action before symptoms become pronounced. Second, smartphone-based health aids treat the user as a unique individual: They learn what factors cause problems for the user, and what therapies work best for the user in specific situations. And third, smartphone-based health aids give the medical industry the unprecedented ability to observe millions of people day-in and day-out. This should help identify factors that contribute to the development of specific medical conditions, detect the presence of specific medical conditions earlier, and develop more effective treatment and management strategies.

None of these products claim to replace doctors, clinics, and hospitals. But they give consumers tools that they can apply to their daily lives, and give healthcare professionals tools they can use to observe patients outside of the clinic setting.

This commentary by Ira Brodsky first appeared at Computerworld. Brodsky is a Senior Analyst with Datacomm Research and is the author of five books about technology. Brodsky focuses on mobile solutions for payments, retail automation, and health care.

Friday, October 4. 2013

Mobile Health Marketplace has a concise and well organized directory of mobile health apps and devices. The directory covers apps for health and wellness, illnesses and injuries, medical treatment support, and workplace health and safety.

Wednesday, March 27. 2013

A combination of disposable wireless sensors and smartphones is about to make health care more personal, immediate, and affordable. New solutions are emerging that harvest real-time health data and respond with on-the-spot warnings or suggestions. This technology will not only produce better outcomes, it will help extend the benefits of modern health care to people in developing countries and keep consumers everywhere better informed about the latest health products and practices.

The disposable wireless sensors being developed and commercialized by Gentag, Inc. are a good example. The sensors are intended for use by consumers and come packaged as either skin patches or specimen dipsticks. Gentag believes there is a huge global market for sensors that can be mass-produced, are easy to use, and work with popular smartphones and tablet computers.

Unlike telemedicine, which was conceived to conquer distance, Gentag’s technology is mainly about immediacy. Consumers can use skin patches and dipsticks at their convenience in their homes and workplaces. Smartphone apps provide instant feedback and can automatically forward results to caregivers. Problems can be spotted in their earliest, most treatable stages and therapy can begin at once.

Disposable sensors offer significant savings over traditional solutions. Most of the sensor designs lend themselves to high-volume mass production. They work with smartphones that consumers already have or are expected to have in the near future. And disposable wireless sensors avoid the costs associated with traveling to and using outpatient labs.

Gentag’s skin patch sensors typically consist of printable chemical strips and near field communications (NFC) chips. The chemical strips can test and measure parameters such as body temperature, skin moisture, and (with the aid of microneedles) blood glucose. NFC makes collecting the results as simple as a waving a mobile phone over the skin patch. (NFC sensors don’t require batteries because the phone provides the power.) Using NFC to read a sensor also helps avoid human error. Dipstick sensors can test specimens such as urine for pregnancy, prostate cancer, and other conditions.

The disposable wireless sensor-smartphone combination can be used to manage serious medical conditions. A smartphone app for managing diabetes can collect blood glucose readings from a skin patch containing microneedles and send commands to an implanted insulin pump. The app can determine when insulin is needed and whether a delivered dose was sufficient. The app can also take into account time of day, food consumed, and the patient’s past responses. Gentag hopes that skin patches with microneedles will free children with Type 1 diabetes from having to stick themselves several times per day.

Gentag’s dipstick sensor technology can detect very specific medical conditions. Monoclonal antibodies are used to produce biomarkers for particular pathogens, allergens, cancers, and drug toxicity. There are potentially thousands of biomarkers that can be detected. The urine test for prostate cancer mentioned above uses biomarkers.

Disposable wireless sensors offer additional benefits to makers of consumer health products. Manufacturers can deliver increased value by bundling disposable wireless sensors that help customers use their products more effectively and efficiently. When customers download the free apps that are required to use the disposable sensors, they identify themselves and establish direct communications with the manufacturers.

This is a big deal, because until now non-prescription consumer health products were nearly always purchased anonymously. Free smartphone apps can be used to gather demographic data, to gauge customer satisfaction, and to learn more about how customers use specific products. The apps can also be used to deliver electronic coupons, new product announcements, and health tips. Most manufacturers are likely to conclude that it’s worth the cost of giving away disposable sensors and smartphone apps to learn about and communicate directly with their end users.

There is another intriguing potential benefit of disposable wireless sensors. Modern medicine is highly information-driven, but most physiological data is collected when patients visit a doctor or emergency room. With Gentag’s technology, data can be gathered from people as they go about their daily activities. Large scale tracking of physiological data could help health care providers detect epidemics earlier and more accurately identify the warning signs for specific medical problems. Disposable wireless sensors and smartphones should also make clinical trials easier for both participants and researchers.

Technology is often blamed for the high cost of health care. However, technology has proved essential to driving down costs in industry after industry. By diagnosing health problems earlier and enabling patients to manage medical conditions at home, disposable wireless sensors and smartphones will help produce better outcomes at lower cost. It’s a bit like having a doctor in your pocket.

Thursday, July 12. 2012

Do health apps really make a difference? American filmmaker Dan Woolley is convinced that they do. Woolley credits his smartphone with saving his life. Woolley was in Haiti working on a film about poverty when the devastating 2010 earthquake struck. Trapped under the Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince, he used the American Heart Association’s Pocket First Aid and CPR app on his iPhone to treat a compound fracture of his leg and bleeding from his forehead. The app warned him that it is important to stay awake when there is a risk of going into shock. He set the phone’s alarm clock to go off every 20 minutes. Woolley was finally pulled out of the rubble more than two days later by a French rescue team.